Red Morin’s still giving thanks

Friday

There were no gourmet meals in Korea 1952. The standard fare for the machine gunners attached to Dog Company was a ration can that served as heating utensil, serving plate, and food all in one.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

MAKING FRIENDS – Red Morin poses with a Korean youngster in 1953.

He’s known the satisfaction of service

There were no gourmet meals in Korea 1952. The standard fare for the machine gunners attached to Dog Company was a ration can that served as heating utensil, serving plate, and food all in one. When Private First Class Robert “Red” Morin learned on Thanksgiving Day that he could have roast turkey and all the fixins, he decided that facing enemy fire was not too high a price for a real dinner.

Reaching the turkey required traversing machine gun alley, a dangerously narrow passage between two enemy hills. He and his buddy Dick Dakota made the two-mile trip that Thursday afternoon. They did encounter enemy machine gun fire as they sprinted across the 50-yard stretch, but were rewarded for their efforts with roast turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy - nectar of the gods to men who had been eating out of cans since landing in the 5-below-zero cold of Korea. Red remembered saying, as they debated whether to make the trip, “For turkey and stuffing, I’ll do it.”

Robert Neil Morin was born on Oct. 26, 1933, at 100 Spring St. in Hyannis. Today, the Marstons Mills man stands about 5 feet 6 inches tall with a medium build, thick glasses and the distinctive shuffle of Parkinson’s disease. Gone are the freckles and the red hair that earned him his nickname, but he remains boyish in his enthusiasm for life. Red loves people. It isn’t surprising to hear him singing to someone (usually a woman) as you pass through the halls of Cape Cod Hospital, where he volunteers.

“I have a song running through my head all the time,” Red said. While some people turn inward as they get older, allowing their lives to be taken up with television and doctor’s appointments, Red shares himself and in the process has managed to really live every minute of his life.

This is not to say that Red’s life has been easy. He was the youngest of four children; three boys and a girl. His father left home when Red was about 5 years old and never had contact with the family again. Nevertheless Red will tell you that he had a good childhood filled with sports, music, friends and summer camp. He learned to play the drums in the fourth grade through a program at the elementary school and continued with free lessons through junior high. Music and drumming has been a joy and a source of income for most of his life. In high school he played football as well as baseball and during the summer he caught for the Cotuit Kettleers.

At 16, while visiting Dennis Yarmouth High School, he spotted a photograph of a girl on a poster advertising a school production. Something about her photo captivated him and he cut the image out of the poster with a razor blade. That girl, Barbara Anne Palmer, later appeared in his homeroom at Barnstable High. When the teacher told him that he was to be responsible for showing the new girl the school, he recalled, “I couldn’t speak.” He and Barbara were married after he returned from Korea in 1952. They stayed happily married for 38 years until her death in 1991.

There is no doubt that the BHS class president could have done well at college if the money had been available to send him. For Red and four of his high school buddies, the military was a good alternative. The Marines may have been an unlikely choice for a 5’6” 17-year-old high school senior, and Red’s mother apparently thought so when she signed the papers that allowed him to enlist. “She didn’t think they would take me, but they did,” Red said as he described her surprise when he announced he was headed to Marine boot camp at Parris Island. The Cape Cod Standard Times ran a series of articles about basic training and the five boys from Barnstable High’s class of 1951 that enlisted together. Red tells with amusement how when the sergeant saw him fire a rifle he told him that he should learn to use a machine gun. He did, and machine gunner 0331 left San Diego in November 1951 for Korea.

Being on the front lines of battle gives men a perspective on life. Red says the experiences he had in Korea stand out in stark relief against the rest of his life. As other recollections have faded, memories from that time persist in vivid detail. Red saw a lot of combat. He lost at least 30 men he called friends while earning his three battle stars. He narrowly escaped being killed more than once.

But in spite of all the horror, he can tell stories with humor and compassion: the Swedish girls on the hospital ship, the way the Turks knew how to have a party, driving the wounded from the front lines in an ambulance, passing up Marilyn Monroe in concert to visit a friend, taking care of his three-legged canine pal Dog Dog, and the hills they took or lost one by one - Alco, OP2 or Hill 229 – along with the recognition that all of that pain and loss came down to politics and bargaining chips for the peace negotiations. These things will change a man, but not always for the worse.

Red’s life hasn’t been about the big things, at least not by the standards that we in modern America tend to judge people. He didn’t go to college; he never ran a company; he didn’t become a doctor or a lawyer. He has never been a politician or an actor. He worked servicing oil burners and supplemented his income playing the drums at night. He has made his life big in small ways by touching people one at a time and helping to make their lives just a little better and a little more fun. And for all the hardships he has endured, he has never lost his feelings of gratitude. After living through all the tough economic times and facing the loss of so many friends and family, he has never become small and self-pitying. It seems that Red is one of those rare people who can grow and learn from his hardships instead of letting them defeat him.

Wistfully, but with that ever-present gratitude, Red said, “I’ve had a fortunate life.”

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